Gaunt’s presence ultimately causes chaos. While many of his customers kill themselves, others commit murder, and there are some, like Sheriff Pangborn, who are working to take back the stolen souls. This led us to examine the concept of the soul. Is it simply a religious or cultural belief, or is there real science to the soul?
A soul is defined as “a non-material essence of a living human that generates consciousness. It can also be considered as the spiritual principle of human beings; or, the moral and emotional nature of human beings.”1 In the Journal of Religion & Psychical Research, Dr. Donald R. Morse attempts to simplify how each religion views the soul. For instance, in Christianity, the typically held belief is that each human has one soul, and that once a person has accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, that soul will be allowed into heaven. In Islam, there is a widely held belief that the soul will stay with the body until the “end of days.” At that time, there will be consequences based on whether the person was good or bad. Morse explains the more complicated concept of the soul in Hinduism:
Hinduism has a concept of a spirit-soul (Atman) and a “subtle body” (consisting of mind, intelligence, and the false ego) that upon death must be purified. To do this, the spirit-soul and the subtle body must enter another body to be reincarnated. If you led a pure life or after being cleansed through reincarnation, the subtle body is discarded and is liberated from the cycle of rebirth (moksha). With the impersonal viewpoint of Hinduism, when moksha occurs, the spirit-soul is absorbed into the all—this is bliss; then reincarnation occurs again. With the personal and predominant viewpoint, when moksha occurs, the spirit-soul with its spiritual body (a seed of which is found in your soul) goes into the spirit sky (similar to heaven) to be with God forever.2
Science tells us that the brain is what makes us ourselves. It is a series of neural pathways which dictates our actions and choices. And once this brain loses oxygen and blood flow from a beating heart, we cease to be. Yet, researchers who are also religious have continued to question whether there is a way to prove that we do, indeed, have a soul that lives apart from our body.
The oldest use of the word “soul” is found in the epic poem Beowulf, written by an anonymous poet sometime between the years 975–1025 CE.
The soul is at the heart of most religions, yet is it possible to prove such an elusive concept? In 1907, Dr. Duncan MacDougall, a Massachusetts physician, was inspired to try. He attempted to construct the most scientific of conditions possible in the era. MacDougall convinced terminally ill patients to participate. They were placed on beds that were outfitted with beam scales. The doctor would then take copious notes, including the patient’s time of death, as well as make certain to include the natural fluctuations in weight that occur because of escaping oxygen and emission of sweat and urine.
At the end of his study, MacDougall concluded that there was, indeed, a weight of the human souclass="underline" twenty-one grams. This finding instantly intrigued the public, and soon the New York Times published an article about the experiment, calling the doctor “reputable.” Just as quickly, fellow doctors and scientists argued that MacDougall’s work was not sound, nor provable, as he insisted. His most egregious error was that he had much too small of a sampling, only six patients. This did not deter the doctor, who several years later, announced he would take photographs of the soul leaving the body at the time of death. He produced several images that some felt was proof of an “ethereal” light above the dying patients’ skulls. However, Dr. MacDougall’s work is not nearly rigorous enough to be considered proper scientific proof.
Science writer Karl Kruszelnicki has noted that out of MacDougall’s six patients only one had lost weight at the moment of death. Two of the patients were excluded from the results due to “technical difficulties,” a patient lost weight but then put the weight back on and two of the other patients registered a loss of weight at death but a few minutes later lost even more weight. MacDougall did not use the six results, just the one that supported his hypothesis. According to Kruszelnicki this was a case of selective reporting as MacDougall had ignored five of the results.3
Despite this, MacDougall’s experiment has grown into a legend that many believe proves the existence of the soul. It has even infiltrated popular culture, such as in the film 21 Grams (2003). In an article for Discover magazine, Ben Thomas explains why MacDougall and those who believed in his theory at the time were driven to believe:
To understand why MacDougall wanted to weigh the soul—and why he thought he could—it helps to understand the environment in which he operated. His work is rife with terms and ideas recognizable from early psychological theorists Freud and Jung. There’s a lot of talk about “psychic functions” and “animating principles”—a grasping for the precise scientific language to describe consciousness, and life itself, in a world still ignorant of FMRI [functional magnetic resonance imaging] and DNA.4
Radiocarbon dating, along with analysis of the writing, was used to determine the age of the Dead Sea Scrolls, original texts of the Hebrew Bible, although scientists were only able to narrow them down from the fourth century BCE to the middle of the fourth century CE.
While science and technology have developed leaps and bounds since the dawn of the twentieth century, humans are still curious about the intersection of religion and science. When Sally in Needful Things unknowingly sells her soul for what she believes is an authentic fragment of Noah’s Ark, she feels as if her religious beliefs are concretely proven. The pursuit for relics is a hallowed tradition, and many archaeologists have devoted their careers to uncovering items or structures that align with religious texts. One recent example is Hezekiah’s Gate:
In the Hebrew Bible, King Hezekiah despised false idols, and he destroyed everything related to his father’s godless beliefs. Decades ago, a gate was found in the city of Tel Lachish, and excavations in 2016 cleared most of the structure. The six rooms covered an area of eighty by eighty foot and today stands about thirteen feet high. It doubled as a shrine and was likely also forcibly retired by Hezekiah in the eighth century B.C. According to the Bible, the gates of Tel Lachish was an important social hub where the elite would sit on benches. The building’s size, as well as seats found inside, indicated that the ruins belonged to the historical shrine-gate. In an upstairs room, researchers also found two altars. Each had four horns, all of them with intentional damage, another possible sign of Hezekiah’s intolerance. Elsewhere in the shrine was a stone toilet. Biblical texts mention the placement of latrines at cult centers as a method of desecration. Tests proved the toilet had never been used and was probably installed for such desecration purposes.5
In 2010, a group of evangelical Christians claimed to have found pieces of Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat in Turkey. Covered by snow and volcanic debris, the finding fascinated Christians across the world. If Sally Radcliffe had lived through Leland Gaunt’s reign of terror in Castle Rock, she would have surely been captivated by the possibility of unearthing Noah’s wooden ship. While the explorers claim to have carbon dated wood found at the site to nearly five thousand years old, many scientists are skeptical. Radiocarbon dating is a process in which the age of an object is found by measuring the radiocarbon of its organic material.